I recently participated in a webinar hosted by Magaya where Gustavo Gomez, Alfred Murgado, and I discussed some of the key findings from “The 2025 State of Digitization in Freight Forwarding” research report. If you weren’t able to attend, you can watch it now on demand.
Alfred kicked off the conversation by asking what surprised me most about the research results. What follows is an excerpt of what I shared.
There were a lot of surprising results. For example, how only 23% of the freight forwarders surveyed have digitized 75% or more of their business processes was a bit surprising. I would have expected to see a greater level of digitization by now.
But if I had to pick one thing that surprised me the most it would be how relatively few of the freight forwarders we surveyed (only 23%) are using a real-time freight visibility solution. The same for business intelligence and analytics. I would have expected those solutions to be much higher on the list.
The ability to quickly and accurately answer the most common questions shippers ask — “Where is my shipment? When will it arrive?” — is really table stakes today. In fact, when we asked shippers as part of the research ”Which technological capabilities offered by freight forwarders and LSPs do you find most valuable?”, real-time shipment tracking topped the list, with 67% of the respondents selecting it.
So, when you see this gap between real-time shipment tracking topping the list for shippers and real-time freight visibility being near the bottom of the list of the systems used by freight forwarders, I think this helps to explain why only 38% of the shippers surveyed are only slightly or not at all satisfied with the technological capabilities of their freight forwarders.
Now, there are different ways to enable freight visibility, and some ways are more real-time than others, but the research suggests that many freight forwarders are still laggards in this area.
The same is true with business intelligence and analytics. One of the key lessons learned after the pandemic is that companies need to become more data-driven in their decision making, and BI and analytics play a key role here. The results show, however, that relatively few freight forwarders have invested in this area to date.
That said, the research results also revealed some differences between small freight forwarders and large ones. For example, 78% of large and very large freight forwarders selected “To improve end-to-end shipment visibility” as a driving force for digitization compared to only 38% of small freight forwarders.
Similarly, 56% of large and very large freight forwarders selected “To become more data-driven in decision making” as a driving force for digitization while only 33% of small freight forwarders selected it.
So, the research results indicate it’s the smaller freight forwarders that are lagging behind in both these areas.
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As part of this year’s research, shippers were surveyed to get their perspective on the technological capabilities of their freight forwarders and logistics service providers. What did this “Voice of the Customer” research reveal? Watch the webinar for all the details, where we also discuss other questions, including:
- Are freight forwarders investing in AI, and if so, in what areas?
- Why is digitization imperative for freight forwarders and logistics service providers?
- What are the main “calls to action” for freight forwarders?
